Tuesday, 5 February 2013

Searching for the Tomb

The Current Search

The
searchers have become believers. Quoting the December 3, 2012 Newsweek article-

“A
multidisciplinary research project uniting scientists in America with Mongolian
scholars and archeologists has the first compelling evidence of the location of
Khan’s burial site and the necropolis of the Mongol imperial family on a
mountain range in a remote area in northwestern Mongolia.

Among
the discoveries by the team are the foundations of what appears to be a large
structure from the 13th or 14th century, in an area that has historically been
associated with this grave. Scientists have also found a wide range of
artifacts that include arrowheads, porcelain, and a variety of building material.

“Everything
lines up in a very compelling way,” says Albert Lin, National Geographic
explorer and principal investigator of the project, in an exclusive interview
with Newsweek.

For
800 years the Khentii mountain range, where the site is located, has been
off-limits, decreed thus by Genghis Khan himself before his death. If the
findings bear out, this will be one of the most significant archeological
discoveries in years. Using drones and surface-penetrating radar, and enlisting
the help of thousands of people to sift through satellite data and photographs,
the team has searched the mountain range, systematically photographing 4,000
square miles of landscape.

In
a laboratory at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information
Technology at University of California, San Diego, Lin and his team combed
through the massive volumes of ultrahigh-resolution satellite imagery and built
3-D reconstructions from radar scans in their search for clues to where Genghis
Khan may be buried. As part of an unprecedented open-source project, thousands
of online volunteers sifted through 85,000 high-resolution satellite images to
identify any hidden structures or odd-seeming formations.”

My
question is what is so “compelling” about this evidence? Yes more technological
resources have been utilized than ever before but what specifically links it to
the Great Conqueror? The time frame is not narrow enough to claim with
certainty that it is Genghis Khan’s whose death came in 1227. The artifacts
while of his era have not been proven to belong to him or his entourage. In
short there is no “smoking gun” proving this to be the location of the tomb.
Could it be? Yes, possibly. But other searches have also offered promising
clues but in the end came up empty. In my next blog entry I will give you an
example of just such a search! Remember click on http://forms.aweber.com/form/76/988734676.htm
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